A Breakdown of Trump's Horrifying Immigration Policy and What You Can Do About It

Lately, the news has been awash with upsetting stories of immigrants being detained in the United States, separated from their children, and being placed in federal prisons. Many of them are here seeking asylum due to violence in their home countries, a trend that the United States is partially responsible for. Here, find what you need to know about the Trump administration's new zero-tolerance policy and how it's affecting people right now:

Okay, what is the zero-tolerance policy?

Back in May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration's "zero tolerance" policy for anyone caught by Border Patrol illegally crossing the border. According to Vox, this means that anyone—even those seeking asylum—caught crossing illegally will be prosecuted, and if they are with a child, that child will be treated as an "unaccompanied minor" and therefore in the care of the government. In his statement, Sessions said, "If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law."

A public defender in McAllen says some migrants are told their kids are going to be taken away briefly to bathe, and then it dawns on them hours later they aren't coming back

Besides separating parents from their children, this also means that those who are seeking asylum are now being brought to federal prisons, instead of immigrant detention centers, which is what has typically happened in the past.

It's also important to note that it is legal to seek asylum in the United States, and one must be in the country to do so.

How is this actually playing out on the ground in states like Washington?

A number of immigrants were recently moved from Texas to a Federal Detention Center in Seattle. Many of these immigrants are mothers and many have been separated from their children, just one instance of the larger issue we're seeing across the country.

Jorge Barón, the executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, told ELLE.com that NWIRP only discovered people were being held at the prison due to a rumor they heard from people in Texas who had been working with some of the immigrants previously. "Nobody had heard," he said. "Nobody knew." It's now been discovered that over 200 people are being held at the prison. (Reuters has reported that authorities are transferring about 1,600 ICE detainees to federal prisons, the first large-scale use of federal prisons to hold detainees.)

I hope everyone will watch and share this @MSNBC interview. I promised I would tell the stories of these courageous women who have been horrifically mistreated by our government. They are still behind bars and I told them we would fight tirelessly for their release. pic.twitter.com/dDAOMErkmB

What's next for these parents?

This is where things get complicated. As of earlier this week, Barón said it isn't clear what processes these detainees are being put through. Normally, those seeking asylum would receive a credible fear interview within a couple days of being detained; NWIRP has spoken to people who've been detained for over a month and they have yet to receive the interview and therefore have yet to go to immigration court, meaning the normal procedures seem to be at a standstill.

The other main issue is that many of these parents still have very limited information about where their children are and only some in Seattle have been able to get in contact with their kids. One woman told Barón that at one point she was provided a piece of paper with the location of her nine-year-old child, but when she went to call the number from the prison, the call wouldn't go through because the phone system wasn't set up to allow calls to that number. "She was devastated," he said. "It was almost like a tease. Like they gave her a glimmer of hope but then took it away."

And people like Barón are still trying to figure out the ICE points of contact for these men and women. When talking about the logistics and procedures behind the situation, he said: "First of all, [the administration] absolutely should not be doing this in the first place, but if you’re going to create this horrible policy, at the very least be prepared because it’s not a surprise that the parents are going to want to make calls to their children or they’re going to want to know where they are. It’s been incredibly frustrating."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ruled that the Trump administration will stop granting asylum to victims of domestic violence or gang violence. What does that mean for people in the country seeking asylum right now?

In short, we'll have to see. Before Sessions' decisions, those who filed asylum applications based on domestic or gang violence would have been interviewed by an asylum officer and would either be granted asylum or be referred to an immigration judge for a full immigration hearing. This process is still happening, but now those claims themselves are not enough to win asylum.

There's also a possibility that those same officers will deny people with these claims and refer them to an immigration court hearing where a judge will likely deny them as well. This case, or any other pending case—including those that are currently in the court system—has the possibility of getting up to the circuit court of appeals, where it would be tried by someone who can overrule this decision, but that process can take years. Congress also has the ability to act, but again, that could take a while.

Julia Bizer, staff attorney for the Detained Children’s Program at Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition, told ELLE.com that the ruling will also make it difficult for any asylum seeker who's a survivor of what Sessions calls "violence by private actors," which could potentially include any type of violence because even a government official persecuting someone could be seen as a “private actor.”

Bizer said it's possible to still win cases that include a domestic violence claim, but it will become a lot more difficult and there will many cases that are no longer viable, including a number of child abuse cases. About the ruling, she said, "To say in general that domestic violence is a misfortune that befalls some people generally shows a lack of understanding of domestic violence, and it also removes the cultural context [for] a lot of these countries where domestic violence is occurring alongside some of the highest rates [of violence] against women and femicide in the world."

How did we even get here?

In recent years, there's been increased migration from Central America to the United States due to high levels of violence, including sexual violence and gender-based violence. For the Trump administration, this zero-tolerance policy is a way to try and stop people from coming. The Obama administration also tried to decrease the number of people migrating to the United States, but they did so by using the tactic of family detention, meaning they would detain an entire family seeking asylum. (There was detention before the Obama administration, but they did expand it.)

"And of course the family detention did not reduce people fleeing because people are fleeing situations where they’re literally fleeing for their lives," Barón said. "So you can make things very hard on them, but if you’re trying to save yourself, you will endure big hardships."

Now, the Trump administration has taken up these new tactics as deterrents: separating parents from their children, issuing criminal penalties for illegal entry, even when people are seeking asylum, and potentially denying asylum to those claiming domestic violence.

"I think any way of preventing people from coming to this country is what maybe [this administration's] ultimate aim is," Bizer said. "But in this case it’s focused on a specific region and particularly harms women or children or anyone who’s seeking protection from domestic violence."

This all sounds horrifying. How can I help?

As always, contact your federal representatives to let them know how you feel about the current policies. Look for local efforts in your community, including protests, and find local immigrant rights organizations, like CAIR Coalition, near you. There are also national organizations like the ACLU, which has a lawsuit pending regarding this, and KIND, which does work at the national level for children who are separated from their families.

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